It Didn't Come Back
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: One shot: After the last Agni Kai, Aang takes Azula's firebending.


_Hands that could not produce were useless hands as far as she was concerned. A body without heat may as well be a corpse. The moment the fire died in her hands was the moment a good part of her died away. To be robbed of something so precious…_

To have one's soul so tampered with. Not one person was at all opposed to it, in fact there was a vote. And the general public expressed that they would feel much safer if they'd never see another blue flame in their lives. Zuko and the Avatar were much more than willing to comply. With matching scars, she was willing to bet that they would also feel at better ease when her flame finally smothered. On its own accord it wouldn't be doing so any time soon, so they would snuff it out themselves. Or at least the Avatar would.

Then and there, with her arms still bound and her feet tethered to the floor by cool shackles looped around her ankles, they were going to steal the last thing that was truly hers. She still had the sense to know that much.

"The decision has been made. Any last-minute opposition?" Zuko asked. She hoped that at least one person would argue that tampering with someone's spirit energy like that was morally grey at best. There wasn't a raised and in sight nor a protest to be heard. "Go ahead Aang."

Three words. Three simple words and her fate was enacted.

Briefly she lowered her gaze, her head dipping forward. Her bindings didn't even allow her to say goodbye to her firebending…to see it one last time. No, it would just be gone. Her last memory of it would be using it to fight a losing battle.

"One more time." She requested quietly, when Aang came within earshot. "Just let me use it one last time."

"On who? Me?"

"I just want to see it one last time…"

He shook his head sadly. She supposed couldn't blame him for not trusting her. She probably would have lashed out as soon as he loosened the chains. He set one hand on her forehead and the other above her heart. No doubt, the boy could hear how quick it beat. It registered on his face that he had taken notice. It caused a fleeting hesitation and within Azula, a short-lived flutter of hope and then he took the plunge.

Azula would keep her eyes open; let him see in them what he was doing to her. That was the plan, that was what she fought to do. Even so, despite her best efforts, she found them closing. Her head pounded and ached.

She tried to fight it. To purge his spirit from hers. But he had eras worth of them, every Avatar past fought against her. But she would fight it to the end. Maybe if she could overtake his spirit, if she could spill her will into his own…

Her head reeled back, in some sense anyhow. Her physical body was paralyzed, but her soul body was writhing. It was more than jarring to feel spectral hands pull and tug. And even more so to feel icy waters lap at her inner fire. She should have let him just yank her fire away from her. To feel cold waves undulating in place of her fire was infinitely worse. Even when they retreated she could still feel a hollow coldness in her belly where her fire chakra used to dwell.

Waking up was worse than disorienting. It was downright confusing, a complete mental vertigo. One that became physical to the point where her head lolled and she toppled, her cheek hitting the floor with a thud that sparked concern within Aang. With a somber sort of compassion, he lifted her up and brought water to her temple and cheekbone, which had take the worst of the fall. He massaged the water until the red faded and the dull ache stopped. She wished that he hadn't, with the pain gone all she had to focus on was the vast void where her fire had been.

"Give it back, Avatar." She muttered in a hoarse whisper . "Give it back."

For weeks that was the only thing she said. Her only reply to anything;

"Do you want something to eat?"

"Give it back."

"Anything to drink?"

"Give it back."

The princess was in deep then, deeper than before, lost within her own scrambled thoughts. Lost to her madness so deeply that Azula was gone. And Azula wouldn't come back until her fire did.

Her fire didn't come back.


End file.
